Puzzle #7 - little circles in squares

Thanks.

Well, 'departed' could maybe be 'deployed' -- that didn't come up in any of the possibilities, but it sort of looked like it could have. The others, I'm very sure of -- they're all part of sequences that decode multiple words using the same alphabet.

Decode method:

Similar decryption technique as puzzle #4:

Take each segment of the circle pattern
lkj--------------------------------------------
---BCD-----------------------------------------
------LKJ--------------------------------------
---------IHGFE---------------------------------
--------------ihgfe----------------------------
-------------------dcb-------------------------
--------------------- aXWVUTSRQPONM------------
-----------------------------------Axwvutrqponm

Put them together to make a key
lkjBCDLKJIHGFEihgfedcbaXWVUTSRQPONMAxwvutrqponm

Put that under an a-z alphabet
nopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklm
lkjBCDLKJIHGFEihgfedcbaXWVUTSRQPONMAxwvutrqponm

Look up each letter, while rotating the top row
hSSJOUHcXm
conspiracy

The actual alphabets I used are:

XWVUTSRQPONJIHGFEDCBAonmlkji-gf-d-ba--------h--e--c-

which gives "nuclear" (with an initial offset of +41), "mistakenly departed quintuplej" (+24), and "conspirbcy started" (+8). I then played around with words that looked 'sorta' right, and rearranged the alphabet to:

XWVUTSRQPONJIHGFE----------------DCBAonmlkjihgfedbca

which gives "quinttplet arrived" (+34), and the very-mangled "gslheagi" (+13) or "sextqmsu" (+25) for the second word, which could maybe be either 'warheads' or 'sextuple'. Didn't search for the pattern further, since those possibilities both match the thread I found.

There's probably an elegant, simple way that the shifting and rotation all makes sense. Heh, why is that always found after the fact?

I've tried a lot of different answers to, but to no avail:
barksdale missle number six
chuck simpson
the geronimo manifesto
knights of malta
false flag
united states air force

What could the answer possibly be

(EDIT: removed my previous question - change to update my activities)





[edit on 17-8-2008 by harrytuttle]

Good work in solving the puzzle, one wouldn't think it would be so difficult to get the answer. I'm thinking the answer might involve 9/11. The guy who posted this registered on 11-9-2007, submitted the article the same day at 11:09 am. So it could be something like Nuclear 911, just to make us suffer a little more in figuring it out. Broken Arrow would have been perfect.

[edit on 17-8-2008 by DraconianKing]

reply to post by DraconianKing

Ah yes broken arrow -- I tried that one, as well as pinnacle broken arrow, to no avail. Then got excited and thought to try to the more-correct 'empty quiver'. Nope!

Whew, must admit, I'm actually a little glad to wake up and see this still not solved... I was quite tired and was worried about looking silly for missing something obvious.

reply to post by Ian McLean


hehehe I tried broken arrow too.

I'm taking a short break lol Im just exhausted.

The incident is referred as Bent Arrow on numerous occasions starting around page 25. But nothing entered along those lines worked for me.

Excellent job by the way Ian, as usual. I wouldn't be surprised if some of you guys get recruited to the NSA from this game.

[edit on 17-8-2008 by Kellter]

reply to post by Kellter

Ha! Yes, all part of the 'conspirbcy'. I wonder if they'd be impressed by the debate where I called for the elimination of the CIA? Actually, maybe they were behind my losing that debate... (just kidding MemoryShock).

Thinking now that the 'output alphabet', which I currently have as 'A-Z'+'A-Z' might work better as 'A-Z-A'; that would explain why 'warheads', which starts near the end of the alphabet, might not be wrapping correctly... trying that now, looking for that 'elegant pattern'.

Congratulations Ian! That really was a tough one

Guess I'll join in combing through the thread for possible answers.

Nice job, Ian! I've been trying different combinations of words, but nothing has been going through. If it makes it any easier for anybody, I think that all the answers for the puzzles thus far have been in all lower-case. But who knows, maybe they'll switch that up just to mess with us.

I don't think it matters if you use lower case or upper case, the program that checks the answers most likely converts the entire string to lower case before comparing.

Isn't there a resident psychic that can help us out? Whoever chose the answer must be laughing his ass off. I've tried more answers than makes sense, hopefully someone will get it soon.

reply to post by DraconianKing


The answer on puzzle #2 had to be entered in all lowercase. It was a proper name, too. So the answer-checker is case-sensitive. It might need to always be all lowercase; I wonder if the "HAARP" answer had to be entered in all lowercase, too?

Just a brief disclaimer that I'm not absolutely certain that the translation I posted is 100% correct. I'm still working on finding the actual, more elegant cipher pattern. To give example, here some of my notes, when I was only finding runs of one word per cipher alphabet:

cdFkBEb XmQTVaRO UXJHeRWJNl TRCTnkJJ, kfBkdbfioW BWVfPhh, hSSJOUHcXm CAVAmOO
------- -------- ---------- -------- ---------- ------- ---------- -------
kilauea ???????? mistakenly reported quintuplet arrived conspiracy started
casuals detained quintuples strived dropped
nuclear detached strewed storied
departed starred
devalued fetched
decamped spanned
trapped
tippers

Yes, I spent about 4 hours researching the Kilauea volcano... did you know that certain types of lava flow are called 'quintuplets'? (Kilauea quintuplets)

Of interest may be the last word -- although I'm almost certain it's 'started', 'tippers' (and perhaps 'starred') does fit the context, too: "conspiracy tippers". I've tried "anonymous officers", "anonymous airmen", etc., but you never know.

reply to post by Ian McLean


Yes, HAARP had to be entered in all lower-case.

when researching those i found tunguska links i found this article. Perhaps you have found what you needed to find and need to anwser the questoin which is? What was the conspiracy that started about the qtuplets from whatever that weird volcano name was.

blogs.discovery.com...

[edit on 17-8-2008 by rjmelter]

that led me to do Date Searches with nothing special..... All i've got so far is Mar 20 2008 that volcano erupted something more differently then normal. So what is the question does anyone know?

Also... Mar 20 is supposibly the day the U.S. Declared war with Iran? thats confusing... ill see if ATS has anything about that....

[edit on 17-8-2008 by rjmelter]

Thank you, so much, Ian McLean! Without your ciphering, I never could've figured it out...the answer was:

agm-129 advanced cruise missiles

Thread#302187

I read your clues, Ian, as:

nuclear warheads mistakenly departed quintuplet arrived conspiracy started

Searched and found the right thread, then had to figure out what the correct answer was...took me quite a while, too, but...yea! Wish I were as smart as you are, Ian, on figuring out these cryptogram/puzzles! Thanks again,

FibroKat

*edited for spelling

[edit on 8/18/08 by FibroKat]

Originally posted by FibroKat
..the answer was:

agm-129 advanced cruise missiles

That was the entire answer??? So the cryptogram isn't necessarily what goes in the answer page??? OH! I wish I had known that. D'oh!

Congrats everyone!

Haha well done, I tried that answer but it had some upper case letters so it didn't work. At least I've learned my lesson, everything must be lower case.

reply to post by FibroKat

Congrats, FibroKat! Good job; glad I could help.

Thank you, all, so much! Onward to the next, crazy crypto!

[edit on 8/18/08 by FibroKat]